Perplexity.ai has addressed growing concerns on social media that Airtel’s free Perplexity Pro access doesn’t match up to the user experience offered by free versions of ChatGPT. In response to a Reddit thread spreading misinformation about the Airtel and Perplexity partnership, Perplexity.ai clarified that the claims are entirely inaccurate.
“Having worked personally with the Airtel team throughout this partnership, and also being familiar with the specific terms of this deal, I can assure you that it is absolutely false that Airtel customers get a different version of Perplexity Pro than our Pro subscribers. We are accustomed to misinformation about Perplexity online, and how some people on Reddit and X use misinformation about Perplexity in order to boost their follower counts, but India is very dear to us as a company and we would hope to be able to correct this misunderstanding for Indian readers,” Jesse Dwyer from Perplexity.ai told Financial Express.
A post on the popular Reddit forum r/developersIndia has sparked a debate among Indian tech professionals, alleging that the bundled Perplexity Pro offer from Airtel is not the full-featured, paid version of the AI tool. The post, which has garnered a lot of attention and hundreds of upvotes, claims the Airtel-provided service is a stripped-down ‘Pro-Lite’ version.
Three-way test shows Airtel’s Perplexity Pro as the weakest
The developer conducted a comparative test between three accounts: a paid Perplexity Pro account, a free account with limited queries, and the Pro plan bundled with their Airtel data pack. The results of the test showed a stark difference in performance. The Airtel-bundled version reportedly provided slower responses, lacked visual elements like charts, and offered shallow insights with the absence of citations, performing worse than even the free version in some cases.
Airtel continues to advertise that the Perplexity Pro plan, which is extended to all its subscribers for free, costs Rs 17,000 annually.
The core issue, according to the post, is a lack of transparency from Airtel and Perplexity. The user highlights that there is ‘zero communication’ about the feature limitations, leading customers to believe they are receiving the full and premium experience. The OP argues that such a form of advertising is misleading, especially for students and professionals who rely on such tools for research and work.
Neither Airtel nor Perplexity AI has reached out with a statement concerning the confusion.
Reddit reacts to the false claims
Other developers in the comments section have expressed similar concerns. One user stated, “Dunno about ChatGPT free, but the Plus version seems far better than Airtel’s Perplexity Pro. The latter’s answers all seem to be completely generic and lacking any insight. It doesn’t even do a proper Internet search to understand what I’m talking about. Guess we were the fools to think this offer was genuine- AI requires tons of compute power, there is no reason why a Pro subscription could ever be offered free.”
“There’s a huge freaking difference between using claude sonnet 4 in perplexity compared to Claude ai website,” said another Reddit user. “Chatgpt free tier is better than perplexity pro imo,” added another user.